Consent Approvals
Part of Consent-aware marketing automation under Australian law
Stopping messages when a contact withdraws permission
Handle a marketing withdrawal across waiting, scheduled and provider-bound messages, then confirm suppression.
Step 1 — Treat the withdrawal as an immediate stop for that contact. Record the request and suppress the affected marketing before the next send.
Check messages already waiting, scheduled or handed to a provider. Verify the contact’s state in every sending route covered by the request.
Record and interpret the request
Accept withdrawal through the unsubscribe facility and other routes the organisation monitors, such as replies or support conversations. Record the contact reference, address or number, time received, route, wording and requested scope.
If someone says “stop all marketing”, apply that scope across every relevant route, not just the one used to make the request. If the scope is ambiguous, stop the clearly affected marketing while an owner resolves the wider request, and preserve the wording behind the interpretation.
Make the unsubscribe facility functional and straightforward; it should not require a login or charge a fee. Process unsubscribe requests for commercial electronic messages within five business days under the Spam Act 2003 (Cth), but do not treat that deadline as a reason to leave affected sends running.
The Spam Act 2003 (Cth) covers commercial electronic messages such as email and SMS, and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) enforces it. A later permission needs its own suitable evidence; a routine import or new enquiry should not silently clear a withdrawal.
Regulatory Framework for Consent Management
- Enforcement Body
- Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)
- Privacy Regulator
- Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC)
- Compliance Deadline
- Process unsubscribe requests within five business days
- Relevant Privacy Principle
- APP 7 – Open and Transparent Management of Personal Information
Deal with work already in progress
| Message state | Response to consider |
|---|---|
| Not yet selected | Exclude the contact from the eligible audience. |
| Waiting in a journey | Block the next marketing action and hold or remove the record as the tool allows. |
| Scheduled at a sender | Cancel or suppress it there and check the resulting status. |
| Submitted to a provider | Inspect provider evidence before claiming it was stopped. |
These are operating states, not controls offered by every platform. A message already transmitted cannot be recalled by changing a contact field. A withdrawal arriving after provider submission may require investigation of what the provider had already accepted.
Step 2 — Inspect each sender’s waiting and scheduled work, and cancel or suppress affected messages that have not been transmitted. For provider-submitted messages, check what the provider accepted and investigate whether anything was sent.
Recheck suppression before later sends. If the current state cannot be read, hold the affected action and alert an owner. Removing someone from one workflow may leave a scheduled campaign or another sender active.
Assess the message itself
Step 3 — Review what each pending message contains. Do not use a service, welcome or retention label to bypass a withdrawal; assess whether the content is affected marketing. Assess a genuinely necessary operational message separately, using its actual content and authority.
Direct marketing can include a phone call, email, text, post or targeted online advertising. If the request covers calls or another channel, include each relevant sender in the stop and check for pending activity there.
For personal information used in direct marketing, consider the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). The OAIC (Office of the Australian Information Commissioner) is the privacy regulator; APP 7 is not addressed here.
Pass a request to anyone sending affected marketing on the organisation’s behalf. Record which destinations received the request and investigate any failed update.
Close the request with evidence
Step 4 — Confirm the suppression state, the disposition of queued work and the outcome at each relevant sender. Retain the original request time and the time each destination acted.
Keep the request wording and the results of the sender and queue checks in the request record. If a message was sent after the request, record its actual timing and route for review.
A controlled acceptance check can place a marketing message in a queue, submit a withdrawal, then inspect the central record and sender queue before the scheduled action. A separate case should cover a request made after provider hand-off. Each check needs the actual sender’s result, not only a workflow branch.
